Stax - a Platform for Java Applications in the Cloud

Stax Networks recently launched their Stax product into a private beta.

Stax is a platform for developing, deploying, and managing Java applications built around Amazon EC2 and S3 services.

The approach used by the platform seems fairly intuitive and straightforward:

1. Generate an application using one of a number of templates.
2. Download the generated application source code to a local machine for development.
3. Update the app as needed.
4. Upload the local copy to the server - that will get the application deployed to "production".

A few highlights:

1. Versioning is supported so that a rollback to a previous version of an application can be executed if a bad version was deployed.
2. MySQL databases can be created and used as needed.
3. Grails is listed as one of the supported technologies - currently with "experimental" tag.

The service seems to be in the same market segment as Google App Engine, which currently doesn't have Java support but does plan to add it.

I would guess the success of the platform will largely depend, execution aside, on the pricing strategy, which I assume is to be defined/refined closer to the final release or public beta phase.